DATE: Saturday, August 16, 1997             TAG: 9708160237

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW DOLAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   88 lines

MENTAL PATIENTS' HUMAN RIGHTS FOCUS OF HEARING IN CHESAPEAKE STATEWIDE STUDY GROUP IS REVIEWING SOME PROPOSED REFORMS.

Caitlin Wright, an advocate for the mentally ill, said Virginia's system for ensuring human rights for mental patients is hardly more than a paper tiger.

``Inside the facilities, we have a system which rubber-stamps approval on human rights violations, and in the community, we have an invisible human rights protection system,'' said Wright, program director of the Virginia Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

An independent study group appointed by the State Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services Board to study human rights protections for the mentally ill heard Wright and others at the region's only public hearing here Friday.

Its recommendations, based on three public hearings, are due by November.

Friday's hearing, which drew more than 50 people to the Southeastern Training Center, was prompted in part by the death last year of Gloria Huntley, a Central State Hospital patient, after she was strapped in a bed for some 300 hours during one month. Huntley, 31, died in June 1996 despite a warning from her doctor that her asthma, epilepsy and heart condition meant that such bed restraints could lead to her death.

The study group is reviewing reforms, including:

the proper structure of a human rights system;

the effectiveness of systems in other states;

the role of human rights advocates;

the need for training of human rights advocates and members of local human rights committees;

and the resources needed to provide adequate human rights protections.

South Hampton Roads mental health advocates and parents of mentally ill patients spoke out passionately at the hearing about their own children's abuse and called for the state to set up an independent patient-advocate system to safeguard patients' rights in the future.

Dennis I. Wool, executive director of the Virginia Beach Community Services Board and a member of The Human Rights Study Group, said speakers at hearings in Roanoke and Fairfax focused on the Huntley case, but those at more recent hearings concentrated on local abuses.

``But we can't make policy solely on an individual experience,'' said Wool. ``We need to hear about how to change the system to respond more effectively in the future.''

Wool added that the group is examining several alternatives, including both private and public systems for protecting the rights of the mentally ill and the mentally retarded.

Eric Knapp of Virginia Beach, who was a patient at Eastern State Hospital in 1992, said human rights groups need more independence and assurances of confidentiality.

``Human rights groups would need access to patient names, addresses and telephone numbers. Contacts would have to be made outside the community programs, as patients are easily intimidated,'' Knapp said.

Norfolk Community Services Board member Martha Smith, whose son Ben had schizophrenia for 17 years of his 34 years of life, said the Department for the Rights of Virginians with Disabilities has a dismal record of protecting the mentally ill.

Though Smith said she was generally pleased with her son's care at Eastern State Hospital, she was never told about one violent incident.

``. . . Another patient. . . cracked Ben's head on the concrete floor and fractured 11 teeth. We never heard about this incident from the hospital - just silence,'' Smith recounted.

From those experiences, Smith realized that the Department for the Rights of Virginians with Disabilities has an inherent conflict-of-interest in its role as a government agency advocating patient rights.

``Nationally, 45 out of 56 organizations receiving federal protection and advocacy grants for the mentally disabled are outside the state government,'' she said. ``Virginia is certainly lagging in action.''

Parents like Jewel M. McGee, who said her son Joseph was beaten and raped in the care of a now-defunct private group home in Virginia Beach, said the system needs a complete overhaul.

``The protective mechanisms need to be replaced by an entity totally removed from the (state) mental health department,'' McGee said. ``And it needs some real power.

Wright echoed the calls for an independent watchdog as the only solution toward protecting society's most vulnerable members.

``As it functions now, the internal human rights system does consumers and families a grave disservice,'' Wright said. ``It serves to mask and legitimize the abuse and neglect that occurs in the mental health system, rather than acting to protect the interests and lives of our most disabled citizens.'' ILLUSTRATION: EXPRESS YOUR VIEWS

Written testimony may still

be submitted to: Human Rights Study Group, c/o State MHMRSAS

Board, P.O. Box 1797, Richmond, Va.

23218-1797

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